The primary and secondary objectives of the Early Developmental Stages of Substance Abuse Study (EDSP) are described along with a detailed description of the overall design, special design features and instruments used. The EDSP is a 5-year prospective study with three waves of assessments. Special design features are the linkages with family genetic investigations as well as neuroendocrinological stress tests in high-risk subjects. Overall, 3,021 adolescents and young adults aged 14–24 years are included. The response rate for the baseline investigation was 71%. Diagnostic assessments were made by using a modified lifetime (baseline) and 12-month change version of the WHO-CIDI, adjusted for DSM-IV. Modifications refer to a more detailed quantitative assessment of symptoms and substance use variables as well as the inclusion of questions to assess course of disorders and subthreshold diagnostic conditions.

L'objectif principal de cette recherche consistait à déterminer si les adultes avec un TDAH démontreraient des différences comparativement à un groupe contrôle sur les construits cognitifs mesurés par le logiciel écologique SAVR. SAVR, qui demande un effort cognitif soutenu sur une longue période de temps, mesure quatre construits cognitifs reconnus dans la littérature pour être impliqués dans le bon fonctionnement des activités de la vie quotidienne, soit la planification, la mémoire prospective, la mémoire de travail et la mémoire rétrospective. Trente adultes avec un TDAH (sous-type combiné) ont été comparés à 30 adultes contrôle sur SAVR et sur des épreuves neuropsychologiques pour l'évaluation du TDAH. Ces adultes étaient appariés pour l'âge, le QI, la scolarité et le revenu, ainsi que contrôlés pour l'état anxieux et dépressif. Les résultats indiquent que le groupe TDAH manifeste plusieurs difficultés exécutives sur des tests neuropsychologiques, alors que, contrairement aux attentes, le groupe TDAH s'est montré comparable au groupe contrôle pour le SAVR. Nous croyons qu'une forme de renforcement générée par SAVR et son format de présentation, analogue à celle d'un jeu vidéo, ont permis d'améliorer les capacités d'inhibition chez les adultes avec un TDAH, normalisant ainsi leurs performances. D'autre part, les participants présentant le plus de caractéristiques d'impulsivité ont obtenu de meilleures performances aux épreuves se basant sur une attention diffuse comparativement au groupe contrôle. Cette recherche suggère que l'aménagement des épreuves cognitives peut-être fait de façon à contourner des limites exécutives, maintes fois démontrées, des adultes avec TDAH. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : TDAH, adultes, fonctions exécutives, mémoire prospective, genèse de scripts, planification, mémoire de travail, écologique.

This research examined the critical thinking (CT) skills and conceptions of prospective teachers studying at Foreign Language Education Department at Middle East Technical University. In this way, the study intended to contribute to the field of curriculum and instruction by pointing to the currents status while constituting a basis for further actions in teacher education in terms CT. In this research, data analysis was carried out through both quantitative and qualitative analysis. A survey, including Student Information Form, and Watson and Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal- Form YM Turkish version were utilized for data gathering. Data were collected from 103 prospective teachers in the junior and senior level during the Spring Semester of 2007- 2008 Academic Year. Results demonstrated that the critical thinking (CT) levels of prospective teachers assessed by WGCTA are in medium level. In addition, WGCTA-YM cannot be predicted from reported regular reading activity, CGPA, and gender. Besides, results showed that, prospective teachers make rudiment or vague statements about critical thinking activities and do not point to a common instructional activity. In terms of critical thinking definitions, prospective teachers mostly perceive CT as a cognitive skill. Furthermore, there is a common sense view of CT rather than an understanding based on literature. The results revealed that prospective teachers are short of the essential CT skills and the CT comprehension to be able to raise individuals with CT ability. Therefore, curriculum renovation movements, projects, and research studies to improve critical thinking skills in teacher education should be developed and implemented.

The aim of this study was to investigate the changes on what the prospective elementary mathematics teachers noticed as they watched video cases and discussed online. More specially, I wanted to answer the question &ldquo / To what extent the elementary prospective mathematics teachers&rsquo / noticing with respect to reform-minded teaching changes during their video case-based teacher education, in terms of teacher and student roles?&rdquo / With this question in mind, I asked senior prospective mathematics teachers at METU to watch six video cases depicting real elementary mathematics classrooms, and then discuss these cases in an online forum. The research was conducted during the 2008-2009 fall semester. Participants were asked to write reflection papers after watching a video each week. The online discussions took place in Metu Online-Net ClassR online forum, and each discussion was about a long week. The research study was qualitative in nature. Specifically, it was a case study research. Prospective teachers&rsquo / reflection papers on the videos, the online discussions, and interviews with the selected 15 focus participants at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the study were the data sources. The data were analyzed through the qualitative data analysis techniques. The findings suggested that prospective teachers&rsquo / noticing skills with respect to the teacher and student roles in reform-minded teaching and learning were developed throughout the online video-case based discussions.

It is known that concurrent secondary tasks or attentionally salient stimuli shorten reproduced temporal durations. The main aim of this thesis is to use three types of secondary tasks to see their effects on duration judgments. The Attentional Gate Model (Block &amp / Zakay, 2006) served as theoretical background for a series of 4 experiments. There were 2 baseline/control experiments for studying the effect of 2 different and novel secondary tasks which are temporal comparison and non-temporal executive tasks. Three duration lengths (short-moderate-long) were used (15, 30 and 45 sec) that subjects had to reproduce. In Exp-1 (control experiment for Exp-2) subjects had to reproduce almost empty time intervals. Exp-2, which investigated the role of a secondary temporal task, revealed significantly decreased reproduced durations as compared to Exp-1 which is in line with our hypothesis. In Exp-3 (control experiment for Exp-4) subjects carried out a non-temporal/non-executive secondary task. Exp-4, in which a Simon task was used as a non-temporal executive secondary task, resulted in significantly decreased reproduced durations as compared to Exp-3 as well. Moreover, duration length effects were found for all experiments that included an attention consuming secondary tasks (Exp-2-3-4), i.e., longer durations were more underestimated than shorter ones in the presence of attention demanding tasks. We conclude that secondary temporal tasks and even more so executive non-temporal tasks can lead to decreased temporal duration judgements, thus affecting subjects&rsquo / time perception, in line with the Attentional Gate Model.

Thesis--University of Oklahoma. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-101).

Previous studies on nonnative English speaker teachers (NNESTs) (Reyes & Medgyes, 1994; Samimy & Brutt-Griffler, 1999; Llurda, 2008; Rajagopalan, 2005) and publications in World Englishes (WEs), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and English as an international language (EIL), have analyzed and documented how prevailing ideologies rooted in "the myth of the native speaker" (Pennycook, 1994; Canagarajah, 1999; Kramsch, 2000), "the native speaker fallacy" (Phillipson, 1992) and associated ideologies generate discrimination and affect students and teachers' sense of self-worth. By making use of telecollaboration to determine how L1 Spanish speaking Colombian EFL pre-service teachers' interactions with U.S. heritage Spanish speakers (HSSs) influence the Colombian future teachers' self-perceptions as (non) native speakers and future teachers, this study responds to scholars' concerns to diversify the scope of explorations on NNESTs (Samimy & Kurihara, 2008; Llurda, 2008). Examining the ideological side of the native vs. non-native speaker dichotomy in telecollaboration, this research seeks to reverse the tendency to study interactants' exchanges mainly as a language feedback process through which "native speakers" support those who are not native speakers. Under an overarching qualitative phenomenological case study research design, the first article's pre-assessment of participants' self-perceptions of (non) nativeness found that the myth of the native speaker, the native speaker fallacy and associated ideologies permeated participants' self-images as language speakers and prospective teachers. Nevertheless, their ongoing education and the perceived benefits of becoming skillful language users contrasted with the harmful effects of these ideologies. Based on findings in the first article, the second study determined that in adopting meaning making abilities as their center of interest in telecollaboration, most participants focused less on the achievement of idealized native speaker abilities. Their interaction with U.S. peers generated confidence in their use of English, self-criticism of their skills in Spanish and a tendency to embrace the idea that they could succeed as English teachers. The intercultural and sociocultural nature of telecollaboration as a potential resource to leverage Colombian prospective teachers' self-perceptions constitutes the core of the last manuscript. Cooperative relationships with U.S. peers provided participants affective and knowledge-based resources to build more favorable views of themselves, attitudes to confront the detrimental effects of nativespeakership ideologies, and informed judgments to dismantle them. The pedagogical implications section discusses the need to revise the current EFL perspective providing the framework for English language teaching and learning in Colombia, avenues for strengthening students' ideological literacy through telecollaborative tasks and the potential integration of telecollaboration in the language teacher education curriculum as a means to increase participants' linguistic, intercultural and pedagogical abilities, and to cultivate more favorable self-images.

La localisation des industries a connu une forte évolution et un important développement dans l'agglomération du Grand Tunis, voire de fortes implications et rapports avec l'espace urbain de cette agglomération. En effet, les activités industrielles, en croissance depuis plus d'une trentaine d'année, ont fait apparaître de nouveaux besoins et de nouvelles nécessités d'organisation spatiale et d'aménagement de structures pour leur accueil. Or, les travaux de recherche et études consacrés aux relations et rapports entre la localisation des industries et les enjeux urbains de l'agglomération du Grand Tunis demeurent assez rares. C'est pour cette raison que nous avons choisi de concentrer notre effort de réflexion sur une analyse du binôme industrialisation-urbanisation, deux phénomènes concomitants marqués tantôt par des solidarités, tantôt par des ruptures. Plus précisément, notre travail entend contribuer à l'identification et la compréhension de la localisation des activités industrielles et à établir ses principales caractéristiques en rapport avec le développement de l'espace urbain de l'agglomération du Grand Tunis et l'évolution récente de l'industrie. Ce ne sont pas les activités industrielles en elles-mêmes, prises de façon abstraite, qui vont nous intéresser au premier chef, mais c'est avant tout leur matérialisation à travers les zones industrielles où elles semblent plus présentes. Il va s'agir pour nous de contribuer à une analyse plus spatiale de la question croisée de l'industrie et de l'urbain et plus particulièrement le lien entre la localisation industrielle et les enjeux du développement urbain.

L'Analyse de Cycle de Vie (ACV) a été explicitement employée, dans le cadre législatif en Europe et aux Etats-Unis afin de quantifier les bénéfices de filières biocarburants vis-à-vis des objectifs de réduction d'émissions des gaz à effet de serre (GES) et d'indépendance énergétique. Nous investiguons, au cours de cette thèse, la concordance du développement des biocarburants avancés (éthanol lignocellulosique, Biomass to Liquids - BTL, EMHV/HVO à partir de microalgues) avec ces objectifs par le biais de deux travaux indépendants. Le premier est une méta-analyse (synthèse de littérature) des études ACV appliquées aux filières de biocarburants avancés. Dans cette partie de la thèse, en utilisant des méthodes économétriques, nous identifions et quantifions les facteurs qui impactent le plus les résultats d'émissions de GES au long du cycle de vie des produits étudiés et calculons l'intervalle de confiance pour ces résultats. Le deuxième travail est une ACV conséquentielle et prospective illustrée par une étude de cas concernant l'introduction du BTL en France. Nous avons adapté un modèle prospectif de type TIMES pour la réalisation d'évaluations environnementales. De cette façon, nous prenons en compte des mécanismes économiques à l'origine d'impacts sur d'autres systèmes de la production de biocarburants. Ainsi, nous contribuons aux développements méthodologiques autour de l'ACV conséquentielle et prospective avec des discussions sur la définition de l'unité fonctionnelle, la définition des frontières du système, l'inclusion d'aspects dynamiques dans la caractérisation d'impacts, l'utilisation de scénarios (différents contextes politiques et économiques) et la réalisation des analyses de sensibilité sur les frontières du système pour mettre en évidence les limites du modèle utilisé.

Compared to other subjects, Learning Area Technology teaching is a relatively new knowledge area world-wide, especially in the South African school curriculum, and it consequently presents new challenges. One of these challenges is the fact that no previous tertiary training programmes exist for the Learning Area Technology; thus new ones have to be developed. Since limited research has been done regarding Learning Area Technology teaching, teachers of Technology are forced to base their professional teaching and learning practices on approaches from other fields of knowledge and adapt these. This is not necessarily ideal for Learning Area Technology teaching in the South African context. The following question can thus be posed: To which extent do existing pre-service training programmes develop the essential competences and skills required for the effective teaching of the Learning Area Technology? Against the background of this overarching aim of the study, this research attempted to find answers to the following research questions: • What are the competences a qualified Learning Area Technology teacher should possess? • What is the nature of Learning Area Technology teacher training in South Africa? • What is lacking in training programmes for pre-service Learning Area Technology teachers in South Africa? To provide answers to these questions, a literature study as well as an empirical study was conducted. To achieve the aim of the empirical study a phenomenological approach was applied in executing an exploratory qualitative study. A random sample was drawn from available tertiary institutions training pre-service Technology teachers in the Learning Area Technology. Individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with lecturers to enable the researcher to comprehend and interpret experiences and realities in terms of the research question. Findings from the literature study on the competences a qualified technology Teacher should possess indicate that a Technology teacher, upon completion of studies, should posses the following competences to present the Learning Area Technology as a subject specialist: indepth subject knowledge of the various knowledge areas for the Learning Area Technology; suitable pedagogical content knowledge to be able to transform technological knowledge to teachable matter; technological skills in technological processes and techniques; and positive values and attitudes which can be integrated successfully during various learning opportunities. It is also imperative that pre-service Learning Area Technology teachers possess knowledge of appropriate teaching strategies to accomplish critical, creative and problem-solving skills among learners. The empirical research was aimed at establishing the nature of pre-service training programmes in South Africa, as well as identifying shortcomings in the training of pre-service Technology teachers. Data analyses regarding the nature of pre-service training of Learning Area Technology teachers-.enabled the researcher to identify particular shortcomings in preservice training programmes in South Africa. The following shortcomings were identified: insufficient subject knowledge and technological subject skills; limited subject specific pedagogical knowledge; lack of real life situations in learning opportunities; and a lack of modelling of teaching strategies during facilitation of the Learning Area Technology. Based on the findings of the research which was also related to the literature, specific recommendations were made in order to improve the quality of pre-service training for the Learning Area Technology. Recommendations on the identified shortcomings include the following: the training of Learning Area Technology teachers as subject specialists by establishing standards appropriate for tertiary training in order to enhance the development of subject knowledge; the development of subject specific pedagogical content knowledge by implementing micro lessons; revision of time planning and facilities for the practising of technological skills; and sufficient opportunities to practise, analyse and reflect on teaching processes to develop proper and appropriate teaching strategies. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010